An insight into the workings of a PR agency and doing business in the Czech Republic when you are a foreign woman.. and a few other things along the way.

Friday, 11 September 2015

MUSING WHILST FLYING - PART 1

When I first arrived in Prague in 1990, the soon to be great
Czech Airlines had trouble persuading the many foreigners that were piling into
the country to fly with them.The Brits,
in particular, really only trusted British Airways and the idea of flying on
what they then regarded as a ‘third world airline’ was beyond imagination.However, the slightly wild bunch of expats
like myself, who could barely afford to fly at all, didn’t care who we flew on
as long as the ticket was cheap, and every Friday evening what we called the
‘travelling pub’ took off for London with a group of us sitting in the back.

With the curtains drawn (yes, curtains), most of us smoking
as we rattled down the runway and then drinking everything in sight until we
landed in the UK, no-one gave a thought to safety and security, and, actually,
we didn’t need to, as the Czech pilots were former military, who, one felt,
would think nothing of throwing in a couple of loop-the-loops along the way to
make the flight more interesting.

Czech Airlines at that time, though, had some very good
people working for them (those were the days!) and they soon realized that to
start competing with the western airlines, they needed to get marketing.In addition to buying a fleet of new Boeings
(some of which I had the huge pleasure of organizing their first landing for),
they also brought in a loyalty programme that was second to none.Air miles for every trip, irrespective of the
cost, different levels of frequent flying cards that were very easy to gain and
offered all sorts of benefits, and nearly guaranteed upgrades to business class
if one had a gold card (and, sometimes, silver too if you knew the right people
– which we did then).My partner, a handsome chap, was even offered
free upgrades every time he flew by one of the ground staff if he would take
her out occasionally (not sure that ‘taking her out’ was quite what was on
offer, but you can guess what I mean.And no, he didn’t take her up on it!).

Two years on from the flying pub days, the same group of
degenerates could soon be found sitting up in business class on the way to
London, Paris, New York, wherever, and that is where most of us built up our
contact base; we even used to discuss the idea of flying in and out of the UK
some days, purely to hand out business cards!

Such was our loyalty to Czech Airlines at that time, that wherever
we were travelling we would go out of our way to fly with them, even if it
wasn’t the easiest or cheapest way to go (for example, we often flew to Malaga
in Spain via Madrid, in order to go on CSA , rather than taking a direct, low
cost flight!).

Just a few years ago and several changes of personnel later
(and the economic crisis to boot), Czech Airlines sadly announced that they
were stopping all flights to New York.And then to Paris.And then to
London, stating that these were not popular enough, nor economically
viable.Not only that, but all air miles
accrued on their frequent flier programmes needed to be exchanged for flights
by a certain date, otherwise they would disappear (flights that we usually
found were impossible to get), and all benefits such as upgrades and so-on were
ceasing.We couldn’t believe our ears.

We wrote letters to the management, pleaded with them not to
do it, and refused to consider the possibility of flying with anyone else,
until the day came that the last ever Czech Airlines flight landed in
London.And that day was, for many of
us, the last day that we ever, ever, ever flew with Czech Airlines – now we go
out of our way to avoid them, even if that now means a more problematic
route!It was also, probably, the day
that Czech Airlines started its gradual sink into bankruptcy.

Of course we realized that the frequent flier card and the
air-mile awards were overly generous, but we loved Czech Airlines then and we
felt let down (not to mention that we really didn’t believe that routes to
London, Paris and New York weren’t popular or profitable enough… clearly
something more sinister was afoot).

So what is the morale of the story from a marketing point of
view?Better not to offer something at
all than to give something great and then take it away. Customers can be very
fickle and once they get used to a certain level of fee, service, product, they
don’t like seeing it change.

Life has now moved on. We are now proud (and vaguely embarrassed)
holders of Easyjet Plus cards, and we still fly up the front and do a bit of
business. But we miss those days enough
to occasionally fork out for business class tickets (on non-Czech Airlines
fights!) and they still prove to be interesting, in a number of different
ways. See Musing on Flying Part 2.

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